Fisheries of the Northeastern United States; U.S. Fishing Opportunities in the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization Regulatory Area

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[RTID 0648-XE432]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Fisheries of the Northeastern United States; U.S. Fishing Opportunities in the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization Regulatory Area</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Commerce. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notification of U.S. fishing opportunities. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> We are announcing 2025 fishing opportunities in the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO) Regulatory Area with the possibility of being renewed for up to 2 subsequent years. This action is necessary to make fishing privileges in the Regulatory Area available on an equitable basis to the extent possible. The intended effect of this notice is to alert U.S. fishing vessels of fishing opportunities for Atlantic cod, redfish, and <E T="03">Illex</E> squid, along with other fisheries that may become available; to relay the available quotas available to U.S. participants; and to outline the process and requirements for vessels to apply to participate in the 2025 fishery in the NAFO Regulatory Area. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Effective through December 31, 2025. Expressions of interest regarding fishing opportunities in NAFO will be accepted through November 18, 2024. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Expressions of interest regarding U.S. fishing opportunities should be made in writing to Michael Pentony, U.S. Commissioner to NAFO, NMFS Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office at 55 Great Republic Drive, Gloucester, MA 01930 (phone: 978-281-9315, email: <E T="03">Michael.Pentony@noaa.gov</E> ). Information relating to chartering vessels of NAFO Contracting Party, transferring NAFO fishing opportunities to or from another NAFO Contracting Party, or U.S. participation in NAFO is available from Patrick E. Moran in the NMFS Office of International Affairs, Trade, and Commerce at 1315 East-West Highway, Silver Spring, MD 20910 (phone: 301-427-8370, fax: 301-713-2313, email: <E T="03">Pat.Moran@noaa.gov</E> ). Additional information about NAFO fishing opportunities, NAFO Conservation and Enforcement Measures (CEM), and the High Seas Fishing Compliance Act (HSFCA) Permit required for NAFO participation is available from Shannah Jaburek, in the NMFS Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office at 55 Great Republic Drive, Gloucester, MA 01930 (phone: 978-282-8456, fax: 978-281-9135, email: <E T="03">Shannah.Jaburek@noaa.gov</E> ) and online from NAFO at <E T="03">https://www.nafo.int.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Shannah Jaburek, Fishery Policy Analyst, (978) 282-8456. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">General NAFO Background</HD> The United States is a Contracting Party to NAFO. NAFO is an intergovernmental fisheries science and management body whose convention applies to most fishery resources in international waters of the Northwest Atlantic, except salmon, tunas/marlins, whales, and sedentary species such as shellfish. Currently, NAFO has 13 contracting parties from North America, Europe, Asia, and the Caribbean. NAFO's Commission is responsible for the management and conservation of the fishery resources in the NAFO Regulatory Area (in waters outside the exclusive economic zones (EEZ)). Figure 1 shows the NAFO Regulatory Area. <GPH SPAN="3" DEEP="425"> <GID>EN01NO24.000</GID> </GPH> As a Contracting Party to NAFO, the United States may be allocated catch quotas or effort allocations for certain species in specific areas within the NAFO Regulatory Area and/or may participate in fisheries for other species for which we have not received a specific quota. For most stocks for which the United States does not receive a specific allocation, an open allocation, known as the “Others” allocation under the Convention, is shared access among all NAFO Contracting Parties. Additional information on NAFO can be found online at <E T="03">https://www.nafo.int/About-us.</E> The 2025 NAFO CEM—specifying the fishery regulations, Total Allowable Catches (TAC or “quotas”), and other information about the fishery program—will be available online at: <E T="03">https://www.nafo.int/Fisheries/Conservation</E> when completed. Information from the 2024 Annual Meeting of NAFO, at which changes to the TACs and other management measures occur, is available on the NAFO website. This notice announces the fishing opportunities available to U.S. vessels in NAFO regulatory waters, including specific 2025 stocks for which the United States has an allocation under NAFO, and fishing opportunities under the “Other” NAFO allocations. This notice also outlines the application process and other requirements for U.S. vessels that wish to participate in the 2025 NAFO fisheries. <HD SOURCE="HD1">NAFO Fishing Opportunities Available to U.S. Fishing Vessels</HD> The principal species managed by NAFO are Atlantic cod, yellowtail and witch flounders, Acadian redfish, American plaice, Greenland halibut, white hake, capelin, shrimp, skates, and <E T="03">Illex</E> squid. NAFO specifies conservation measures for fisheries on these species occurring in its Regulatory Area, including TACs for these managed species that are allocated among NAFO Contracting Parties. The United States received quota allocations at the 2024 NAFO Annual Meeting for three stocks to be fished during 2025. The species, location by NAFO subarea, and allocation (in metric tons (mt)) of these 2025 U.S. fishing opportunities are as follows: Atlantic Cod in Division 3L (fishing year July 1, 2024-June 30, 2025), 19.14 mt; Redfish in Division 3M, 69 mt; and <E T="03">Illex</E> Squid in Subareas 3 & 4, 453 mt. Atlantic cod in Division 3L was recently reopened to NAFO fisheries following the protocol described in the NAFO CEM and a decision by the Government of Canada. To better align with Canada's decision process, the NAFO Commission agreed to set the fishing year for this stock to July 1 through June 30 of the following year. Canada will inform NAFO prior to July 1 of each year of its decision to open the directed fishery, at which point, the NAFO allocation would be implemented. The TACs that may be available to U.S. vessels for stocks where the United States has not been specifically allocated quota ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> the “Others” allocation in Annex I.A of the CEM) are as follows: <GPOTABLE COLS="3" OPTS="L2,i1" CDEF="s50,8,8"> <TTITLE>Table 1—2025 NAFO “Others” Allocations</TTITLE> <CHED H="1">Species</CHED> <ENT>50.45</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Redfish</ENT> Note that the United States shares the “Other” allocations with other NAFO Contracting Parties, and access is on a first come, first served basis. Directed fishing is prohibited by NAFO when the “Others” quota for a particular stock has been fully harvested. Additional directed quota for these and other stocks managed within the NAFO Regulatory Area could be made available to U.S. vessels through industry-initiated chartering arrangements or government-to-government transfers of quota from other NAFO Contracting Parties. U.S. vessels participating in NAFO may also retain bycatch of NAFO managed species to the following maximum amounts as outlined in Article 6 of the CEM. The percentage, by weight, is calculated as a percent of each stock of the total catch of species listed in CEM Annex I.A ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> the NAFO managed stocks listed in table 1) retained onboard from the applicable division at the time of inspection, based on logbook information: 1. Cod, Division 3M: 1,250 kilograms (kg) or 5 percent, whichever is greater; 2. Witch Flounder, Division 3NO: 1,250 kg or 5 percent, whichever is greater; 3. Redfish, Division 3LN: 1,250 kg or 5 percent, whichever is greater; 4. Cod, Division 3NO: 1,000 kg or 4 percent, whichever is greater; 5. American plaice: While conducting a directed fishery for yellowtail flounder in Divisions 3LNO—2,900 kg or 15 percent of American plaice in accordance with provisions in Article 6.3(g); otherwise, 1,250 kg or 5 percent, whichever is greater; and 6. For all other Annex I.A stocks where the U.S. has no specific quota, the bycatch limit is 2,500 kg or 10 percent, whichever is greater, unless a ban on fishing applies or the quota for the stock has been fully utilized. If the fishery for the stock is closed or a retention ban applies, the permitted bycatch limit is 1,250 kg or 5 percent, whichever is greater. Opportunities to fish for species not listed above ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> species listed in Annex I.A of the NAFO CEM and non-allocated on non-regulated species), but occurring within the NAFO Regulatory Area, such as Atlantic halibut, may also be available. U.S. fishermen interested in fishing for these other species should contact the NMFS Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office (see <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> ) for additional information. Authorization to fish for such species will include permit-related conditions or restrictions, including but not limited to, minimum size requirements, bycatch-related measures, and catch limits. Any such conditions or restrictions will be designed to ensure the optimum utilization, long-term sustainability, and rational management and conservation of fishery resources in the NAFO Regulatory Area, consistent with the Convention on Cooperation in the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries, which has been adopted by all NAFO Contracting Parties. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Applying for These Fishing Opportunities</HD> Expressions of interest to fish for any or all of the 2025 U.S. fishing opportunities in NAFO described above will be considered from all U.S. fishin ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 23k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━